Botillo and friends

Last week we went on holiday. We stopped off at a couple of places but our destination was Finisterre, the End of the Earth, in Galicia.

When you travel in Spain, which usually means that you will eat in a restaurant, the choice of food is simple. If you were to travel to Valencia for instance you would probably order paella, if you were to come to Pinoso the paella would be the rabbit and snails variety. Go to Cartagena you might try caldero. In Asturias the first choice would probably be fabada and in Cataluña you might try calçots. Eating the regional food is something that Spaniards do when they visit and it's something we mimic.

We were in Ponferrada, which is still in León but closing in on Galicia. There was something on the set meals list called botillo which turned out to be a reddish ball like thing full of bones, lumps of fatty pork seasoned with paprika all shoved into a gut skin and served with cabbage, potatoes and chickpeas. It is an experience I won't be repeating but the experiment is always worth a shot. 

Now, although she would deny this, Maggie is a bit of a picky eater. She doesn't like fish, she's not at all keen on most veg. and with severe limitations on what sort and style of meat. This can cause problems. For instance Finisterre has a fish dock. This means that its restaurants tend to major in things harvested from the sea. What's more that the offer is quite traditional. There must have been ten or more restaurants in a line and all of them did fritura which is, usually, several varieties of deep fried, and often battered seafood and fish, served by weight. It's a big thing in several Spanish seaside towns. Go to Santa Pola and watch big family groups devour kilos of fried squid and cuttlefish. As well as fritura Finisterre also does barnacles, razor shells, crayfish, lobster, clams, scallops, sea bass, cockles, mussels and so on. Now I wouldn't like to suggest that these restaurants don't have steak or chicken and chips but asking for those things is a bit like ordering egg and chips in a Chinese restaurant. If you're in Finisterre then the expectation is that you will eat fish. We ended up in a pizza and burger place having a conversation about why, using the same basic products, these restaurants choose not to vary their offer and so compete. It's not a huge leap to, for example, clam chowder, seafood pasta, ceviche, curried scallops, crab cakes or scallops with a bean salad. But that's not what Spanish restaurants do. All the eateries offer the same food and the same basic recipes. The repetition of set meals featuring codillo, empanada, pimientos de padrón, lacón con pimentón, callos con garbanzos and churrasco throughout Galicia was almost complete.

Spain is full of great cooks and splendid restaurants but the majority of them, at least the ones within our financial reach, offer cheap and plentiful food as their staple. There are places, lots of them, that offer something more contemporary, more adventurous, but they are nowhere near as ubiquitous as the chop and chips places which is a shame.

Parallells where none exist

Sunday and nothing much to do so we went for a bit of a drive around. We went over Zarza way and into the Sierra de la Pila. Maggie suggested a tapas place in Algorrobo for lunch but as we were on single track mountain roads we could either go back via Zarza or round via Fortuna. It was about quarter past three as we rolled into Fortuna so I suggested eating there. Maggie wasn't keen. Fortuna is not her favourite place. A few minutes later we were out of the danger zone and into Baños. Maggie spotted a sign for La Fuente which is a camp site built around a thermal spring.

Now when I think camp sites I think lugging water in big jerry cans, wellis, shower blocks with concrete floors and water that never boils as the flame under the pan dances in the stiff breeze at the door to your, ever so slightly, cramped tent. It's a long time since I've been camping. I presume the experience is very different nowadays but perception and reality are very separate things.

When I worked in Fortuna, I occasionally mentioned camping and camp sites to my English language students. There is a linguistic misunderstanding about the words camping and camp site for Spanish speakers. The problem with my explanation was that for the youngsters of Fortuna their experience of a camp site is not a muddy field with caravan and tent pitches. It is a place with a restaurant where you go for birthday parties and communion meals and where, with suitable weather, you go to use the swimming pool.

La Fuente is a camping, a camp site, but there were no tents. There were hut sized chalets and places to park caravans and motorhomes. There were a lot of motorhomes and lots and lots of them had Dutch and Belgian plates as they so often do. I think there is a sub class of Netherlanders who spend their time sitting outside their motorhomes in Spain. There was bright paintwork, classical Greek style statues and lots of people in bathrobes.

There was also a 12€ menú. Not bad for a Sunday. The look of the  dining room suggested that we were not in for an epicurean feast but there were scores of noisy, constantly moving people so we reckoned it must be OK. We got a table, the waitress scooped up the remains of the previous diners meal in the paper table cloth, Dick Whittington style, and before long we had our drinks, the salad was on the table and the food ordered. The meal was nothing spectacular but we cleared our plates happily enough.

Just like in the UK going for Sunday lunch is a bit of a Spanish ritual. The roast beef and Yorkshire pudding equivalent around here is usually rice with rabbit and snails but at the cheaper end there are lots of chop and chips or fish and chip type set meals - salad, starter, main, pudding, drink, bread and coffee - for between 12 and 15€. Fixed price, set meals aren't so easy to come by on Sundays as they are the rest of the week and they tend to be three or four euros more at the weekend than they are on work days. If you abandon the fixed menu and go for the rice option, or whatever the regional favourite is, then expect it to work out around 25 to 30€ per head.

I was quite taken with the kitschness of la Fuente but, somehow, the photos didn't capture it.